War on Women

SYNOPSIS

Imagine the closest person to you joining forces with your greatest enemy. Maris finds out that her mother supports the far-right party in Estonia. This is very puzzling to her because she knows what abuse her mother has experienced, so how can she go against basic women’s rights? Soon Maris discovers that the same far-right party is connected to an international network of ultra-conservative organizations that helped engineer recent abortion bans in Poland and the United States. She embarks on a conservative “treasure hunt” across Europe, where experts, journalists, and members of the network itself help Maris understand what awaits her—and all women in Estonia—if the Party comes to power, painting a frightening picture of the current state of democracy itself.

War on Women is a participant of the 2024 (Egg)celerator Lab.

 

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR

Portrait of director Maris Salumets while talking on a cellphone.Maris Salumets (she/her) studied Audiovisual Media at Baltic Film and Media School and finished her studies at FAMU in Prague. Now based in London, she has produced award-winning documentary films and branded content, working together with major broadcasters and production houses including Vice, Discovery Channel, Channel 4, ARTE, and BBC. Her specialty is gaining access to difficult subjects and working on themes such as predictive policing, crime, sexual violence, and drug distribution.

 

ABOUT THE PRODUCERS

Portrait of producer Volia ChajkouskayaVolia Chajkouskaya (she/her) is a Belarusian filmmaker, founder of Volia Films, and founder and program director of the Northern Lights Film Festival in Belarus. She first established herself in the industry as a producer with The Road Movie, which premiered at IDFA and was distributed in the US and around the world. She moved to Estonia in 2018 and started producing at Allfilm in Tallinn. In 2020, she took the leap into directing with her short debut Common Language, an intimate family drama that premiered at Jihlava IDFF.

 

Portrait of Elina LitvinovaAfter working as a Line Producer for international producers, Elina Litvinova founded her company THREE BROTHERS in 2015. With a passion for powerful authorship, the company’s first feature credit was critically acclaimed Martti Helde’s Scandinavian Silence, co-produced with ARP Selection (Karlovy Vary 2019, Europa Cinemas Label Award). Elina is one of the EFP Producers on the Move, a member of EAVE, Berlinale Talent Campus and Ex Oriente Networks and is also a member of the Estonian Film Industry Cluster and the European Film Academy.

 

ABOUT THE CO-PRODUCER

Portrait of Tereza NvotovaTereza Nvotova’ (she/her) graduated in direction from film academy FAMU in Prague. Her sophomore feature, Night Siren (Svetlonoc, 2022), premiered in 75th Locarno Film Festival–Cineasti del presente, where it won the Pardo D’Oro (Golden Leopard) for the Best Film. It went on to win the Silver Melies for the Best European Production at Sitges Film Festival, along with special mentions for Best Director and Best Actress. The film is now traveling to more than 30 international film festivals and has been sold to US and German distribution. Her feature debut Filthy (Špina, 2017) screened in major festivals around the world and took home more than 20 awards, including the Czech Film Critics Award for the Best Film of the year. Tereza’s latest HBO documentary, The Lust For Power (Mečiar, 2017) was shortlisted for the European Film Academy Awards 2018 and sparked heated debate about populism and corruption in politics. She is represented by United Talent Agency and Black Bear Pictures.

Matininó

SYNOPSIS

Matininó begins with the decision of ldaliz Villanueva to flee from a violent marriage when her two daughters—María and Desirée—were 6 months and 7 years old. As a way to heal from this experience and explore cycles of violence, the Villanuevas come together to craft a fantasy film—reimagining themselves into an alternative world where women hold the power. The plot of the fantasy unfolds in parallel with the family’s creative process, as the family navigates their own personal grief and the fantastical demands of the world they have created. Through this lens, the family is able to explore difficult histories in a way that centers their narrative on the possibility of new worlds.

Matininó is a participant of the 2024 (Egg)celerator Lab.

 

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR

The Director of Matininó wears a long-sleeve, tropical print button down shirt and sits on a yellow chair to pose for a photo.Gabriela Díaz Arp (she/her) is a filmmaker whose work pushes the boundaries and form of documentary to better understand the complexities of being human. She has directed and produced independent films, exhibits, and interactive experiences, and her work has been supported by the Sundance Documentary Fund, Film Independent, Doc Society, Topic, Studio IX, Points North Institute and Adobe. Her work has screened at festivals around the world including Tribeca, Cannes NEXT, Hot Docs, and Sheffield DocFest. 

 

ABOUT THE CO-PRODUCERS

One of the producers for Matininó with long brown hair, bangs, orange eyeshadow and tattoos smiles for a photograph behind a backdrop trees.Karla Claudio-Betancourt (she/her) is an artist, filmmaker, and educator born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She has a BFA in Film from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her experimental short documentary La Masa (2021) was part of the group exhibition “Momento del yagrumo” at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico. She makes experimental documentaries on Caribbean traditional crafts and ethnobotanical knowledge and recently was a Sundance Producer Fellow. 

 

One of the producers for Matininó, a woman with curly long hair and a dark-colored shirt, poses for a black and white photo.Wendy Muñiz (she/her) is a creative producer, scriptwriter, visual artist, and educator. A Dominican immigrant and first-generation student, she obtained a PhD in Latin American Cultures from Columbia University and co-founded Zero Chill. Her work as a producer has received the support of Ibermedia, DGCine (Dominican Republic), CNCINE (Ecuador), IMCINE (Mexico), and the Tribeca Film Institute, traveling worldwide from BAFICI, Dok Leipzig, and Montréal World Cinema to Colcata IFF, São Paulo, and Zlín. 

Vena Acuática

SYNOPSIS

In this intimate, tender journey through collective resistance in El Salvador, women whose lives are deeply bonded with water and land—reflecting the feminist concept of the body-territory relationship—traverse through a mellow-paced, tropical dream. In a fluid experience of time and place, Vena Acuática reveals the complex layers of El Salvador’s natural ecosystem, piecing together the reality of a region confronting a legacy of environmental negligence through a collage of documentary vignettes. 

Vena Acuática is a participant of the 2024 (Egg)celerator Lab.

 

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR & PRODUCER

A woman smiles and looks to the camera as wind blows her hair. In the background we can see a cloudy sky and a body of water.Amada Torruella (she/they) is a Salvadoran artist, filmmaker, and film programmer raised in El Salvador and Canada, and based between El Salvador and the United States. Amada’s work centers joy and tenderness in the mundane, as well as women’s stories and their care for their environment, each other, and their communities. She is passionate about exploring memory, grief, Central American landscapes, and the relationship between people and their home. In 2023, their short documentary, la isla, about mass detentions in El Salvador, premiered with The New Yorker. Amada’s work has also been featured at Blackstar Film Festival, New Orleans Film Festival, and the San Diego Latino Film Festival. In 2020, Amada co-founded ZOLAS, a multidisciplinary cultural studio based in San Salvador, run by women artists. She was a 2021 JustFilms Ford Foundation/Rockwood Institute Fellow and a Voices of Our Nations Art (VONA) Fellow.

Southmont Drive (working title)

SYNOPSIS

Filmmaker Ashley O’Shay’s late grandfather, Melvin Lewis, was a proud father of 17 in Tuskegee, Alabama. Weaving together memories of Melvin’s living descendents, Southmont documents the family’s journey to reclaim their father’s home, examining a Black family’s plight in the small-town South and their determination to have a gathering space.

Southmont Drive is a participant of the 2024 (Egg)celerator Lab.

 

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR & PRODUCER

Ashley O’Shay (she/her) is a director and cinematographer living in Chicago. Her work focuses on illuminating marginalized voices through immersive stories. Ashley has brought her unique style to collaborate with national brands including Lyft, Nike, Lululemon, and Dr. Martens. Most recently, Ashley’s cinematography appeared in Founder Girls, a 2022 Queen Collective film that premiered at Tribeca 2023. Her debut feature, Unapologetic (2020), captures two fierce abolitionists whose upbringing and experiences shape their activism and views on Black liberation.

Our Hoolocks (working title)

SYNOPSIS

In the biodiverse village of Barekuri in Northeast India, 37-year-old fisherman Sidhanta has dedicated much of his time to defending the Hoolock Gibbons, the country’s sole ape species. While the apes coexist with villagers in delicate harmony, a devastating oilfield blast in May 2020 disrupts this equilibrium. Our Hoolocks chronicles Sidhanta’s journey through the socio-economic fallout of the disaster on his livelihood as well as on the fate of the endangered apes. As Sidhanta faces the moral quandary of a job offer at a new oil rig, the film explores the complex interplay between environmental conservation and economic necessity. Our Hoolocks serves as both a cautionary tale, symbolizing the endangered Hoolocks’ uncertain future, and a lyrical reflection on the intricate relationship between humanity and nature in our ever-changing world. 

Our Hoolocks is a participant of the 2024 (Egg)celerator Lab.

 

ABOUT THE DIRECTORS

Ragini Nath (she/her) is a documentary filmmaker and photographer based in Assam. She studied documentary filmmaking at The New School in New York,and has worked on film projects for the History Channel, Netflix, Disney Hotstar, and Bollywood. She previously worked at the intersection of journalism, film, and social change, and her photography has been exhibited at the Kuala Lumpur Photography Festival, Angkor Photo Festival, and India Photo Festival. Our Hoolocks is her first feature-length documentary.

Social media handles: Instagram

Chinmoy Sonowal (he/him) is a documentary filmmaker and landscape photographer. He has studied creative documentary filmmaking at Sri Aurobindo Center for Arts and Communication in New Delhi. He has a keen interest in working for films that revolve around conservation, natural history, and resource politics. His first film, Bound By Us, (2019), looked at the impacts of human intervention on a forest bordered by the city of New Delhi, and was screened at the Dharamshala International Film Festival, the Kolkata International Film Festival, and elsewhere. Our Hoolocks is his first feature-length documentary.

Social media handles: Instagram

ABOUT THE PRODUCERS

Gary Byung-Seok Kam (he/him) is the first-ever Korean documentary producer nominated for an Oscar® and is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He produced Planet of Snail (2011), which was the first Asian documentary to win Best Feature-Length Documentary at IDFA. His recent filmography includes the Oscar®-nominated In the Absence (2018), the award-winning documentary Shadow Flowers (2019), and Crossing Beyond, the official Olympic film for the 2018 Pyeong Chang Winter Olympics.

Kweighbaye Kotee (she/her) is a Liberian-American film producer and writer. Her filmography includes Bushwick Diaries (2015), Hello Sickness (2023) and Indie Cinema New York: ICNY (2015). Developing creative platforms that equally include women and other underrepresented voices is a personal mission of hers, and is a significant component of her projects and businesses, which include the Bushwick Film Festival and the Bushwick Film Institute. Kweighbaye also runs the consulting group Local Citizens, where she works with corporate companies to build internal programs that support diverse creators and low income-communities. In 2021, Kweighbaye was selected by Lucy Liu to receive the Jane Walker IFundWomen’s First Women Grant for her groundbreaking work. 

NINE

SYNOPSIS

When he was sent to prison at the age of 18, Gerald Hankerson met Henry Grisby, who raised him into the man he is today. Using the lessons he learns from Henry, Gerald makes history by organizing his way out of prison, becoming the first person sentenced to life without parole in Washington State to be granted his freedom. Now, Gerald is on a mission to bring home his 83-year old “Pops”—while there is still time.

Nine is a participant of the 2024 (Egg)celerator Lab.

 

ABOUT THE DIRECTORS

Rachael DeCruz (she/her) is a filmmaker and racial justice organizer. Her work centers on how familial and community bonds fortify people to push back against racist systems. She directed The Panola Project, a short film chronicling how an often-overlooked rural Black community in Alabama came together in creative ways to survive the pandemic. The film was an official selection of over 35 festivals including Sundance, HotDocs, and BlackStar, and received 12 festival awards. Rachael was the former Chief of Staff at Race Forward, the country’s largest multiracial racial justice nonprofit. Nine is her feature debut. 

Social Media Handles:

Instagram,  Facebook,  and Twitter

Jeremy S. Levine’s (he/him) work seeks to unearth buried tragedies in a society in active denial of its own past. An Emmy® award-winning filmmaker and two-time Sundance Institute fellow, his work has screened at over a hundred film festivals (including the Berlinale, Tribeca, and Sundance); has streamed on Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu; has been broadcast nationally in nine countries; and has received 25 festival awards. In 2006, Levine co-founded the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective, a community of professional filmmakers dedicated to collaboration and mutual support. 

Social Media Handles:

Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter

ABOUT THE PRODUCER

Headshot of Rajal PitrodaRajal Pitroda (she/her) is a producer of fiction and non-fiction films. She is a Women at Sundance Fellow, an Impact Partners Producers Fellow, a Sundance Creative Producing Fellow, and a Firelight Media Impact Producing Fellow. Rajal most recently produced Down a Dark Stairwell, a feature documentary that premiered at the 2020 True/False Film Festival and was broadcast on Independent Lens. Her work has been supported by Women in Film, Black Public Media, Chicken & Egg Pictures, the Tribeca Film Institute, SFFILM, and others. Prior to producing, Rajal was the Founder of Cinevention, a media company where she designed and executed marketing and distribution strategies for feature films. Rajal started her career in film working in international marketing for Bollywood movies based in Mumbai. She has a degree in Economics from the University of Michigan and an MBA from London Business School.

Two Mountains Weighing Down My Chest

SYNOPSIS

Raised as a tomboy during the 1990s in China and now living in Berlin, 32-year-old Viv faces an existential crisis she didn’t know existed. In every corner of her life, nuanced clashes arise between the progressive German city and Viv’s conservative upbringing. Following her curious but clumsy exploration of gender, sexuality, and artistic identity, the film takes a witty, sharp look at what it means to feel a sense of belonging in a globalized world.

Two Mountains Weighing Down My Chest is a participant of the 2024 (Egg)celerator Lab.

 

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR

Headshot of Viv LiViv Li (she/her) is a Chinese filmmaker and artist based in Berlin. She is a Berlinale Talent, a Sundance Grantee, an IDFA Alumni, a Nipkow Fellow, and a Logan Fellow. Viv holds a master in Documentary Directing from DocNomads and a bachelor in Drama and Films from the University of Manchester. Born and raised in Beijing, she has spent the past 14 years living in various countries in Europe, South America, and Asia, granting her a distinct point of view on cultural and artistic boundaries. 

 

ABOUT THE PRODUCERS

Headshot of Daniela DieterichDaniela Dieterich (she/her) is based in Cologne, Germany. She has a university degree in Communications, Media, and Sound-studies and is a Sundance Grantee and a Dok.Incubator Alumna. She has worked as production manager for various short and feature films, and for film seminars at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Since 2017, she has been working  for CORSO Film, where she was a producer for Searching Eva (dir. Pia Hellenthal), which screened at Berlinale Panorama, IDFA, HOT DOCS, Sheffield DocFest, and more, and won a Special Mention at CPH:DOX and the Audience Award Athens. 

 

Headshot of Erik WinkerErik Winker (he/ him) has been working in the field of documentary for over 20 years and is the CEO of the production company CORSO Film. CORSO productions are shown at festivals, on TV, and in cinemas worldwide and have been awarded numerous times. Credits include the films Work Hard Play Hard, Searching Eva, Happy, Acasa my Home, A Woman Captures or Taming the Garden. Erik works as a tutor for international workshops like Dok.Incubator, Ex Oriente, ESo Doc, and Documentary Campus and is a regular member in festival and funding juries. He‘s a former chairman of the regional filmmaker’s association Filmbüro NW, a member of the German Film Academy, and a founding member of the Documentary Association of Europe. Since 2023, he’s been a professor for documentary at the University Of Applied Sciences Mainz.

 

ABOUT THE CO-PRODUCER

Headshot of Olivia Sophie van LeeuwenOlivia Sophie van Leeuwen (she/her) is partner and managing director at HALAL. With a Media Studies Master’s degree from the University of Amsterdam and the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Olivia has been working with documentaries, TV series, art, and feature films for more than a decade. In 2020, Screen Daily named Olivia a “Dutch Filmmaker to Watch.”

Jaripeo

SYNOPSIS

(Formerly Milpa)

The jaripeo is the heart of what it means to be a Mexican cowboy, a celebration of machismo with huge importance to the largely diasporic community from Michoacán. But looking closely, the same rodeo arena can reveal another world: a knowing glance between two men, a small brush of the hand on another’s back. Using the jaripeo as the stage on which we follow the lives of our characters, a space opens up to question: What lies beneath the performance of machismo? How does queer desire survive in oppressively traditional spaces? How will our protagonists find belonging in masculinity, in their community—and within themselves?

Jaripeo is a participant of the 2024 (Egg)celerator Lab.

 

ABOUT THE DIRECTORS

Efraín Mojica (they/them) is a photographer, filmmaker, and multidisciplinary artist from the Mexican State of Michoacán living in Mexico City. Their work has been shown in galleries including Kunstverein Neukolln and MZ Galleries in Berlin, Magia Roja in Barcelona, the Factory in Seattle, and Zyanya in Mexico City. Video art is a central part of Efraín’s art, and their filmmaking, in turn, is heavily influenced by their conceptual artwork which explores the translation and interpolation of different mediums—light, sound, and matter. 

 

Rebecca Zweig (she/her) is an award-winning writer, poet, and filmmaker living in Mexico City. Her work has been featured in such places as The New York Times, The Nation, and Revista Nexos, among others, and is forthcoming in Harper’s and n+1. Her documentary directorial debut with Efraín Mojica has received support from the Points North Fellowship and the SFFILM Documentary Film Fund. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

 

ABOUT THE PRODUCER

Sarah Strunin (she/her) is a documentary producer living in Los Angeles, California. She recently worked as a Producer at This Machine Filmworks and as a freelancer she has worked closely with award-winning directors Liza Mandelup, R.J. Cutler, Cecilia Peck, Nancy Schwartzman and Ben Sinclair. She was a 2023 Points North Fellow for Jaripeo (formerly Milpa), and is producing two other feature films that have together received support from Catapult, IDA, SFFILM, and BAVC.

Holder of the Sky

SYNOPSIS

In the creation story of the Oneida tribe of Wisconsin, two twins competed for two very different ways of life. The right-handed twin paved a peaceful path, living in harmony with all living things; the left-handed twin plotted a path of destruction. When goodness prevailed, the right-handed twin earned Oneida’s fabled namesake, Holder of the Sky.

Holder of the Sky follows three Wisconsin tribal members—an Oneida farmer, an Ojibwe spearfisher, and a Menominee logger—whose lives have been shaped by the contemporary manifestation of the left-handed twin. As they compete with land and resource mismanagement, anti-Indian biases, and hate groups, they struggle to honor their traditional lifeways.  Their realities have been shaped by legacies of land loss and broken promises, but their everyday lives are filled with acts of resistance. This film lifts up the voices of people who are a vital part of the American story but are too often grossly overlooked.

Holder of the Sky is a participant of the 2024 (Egg)celerator Lab.

 

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR & PRODUCER

Tsanavi Spoonhunter stands in front of a red background with a smile looking above the camera. She is wearing a black shirt with a matching set of quill earrings and a beaded lanyard. Black and white image.
Credit: Christian Lee Collins

Tsanavi Spoonhunter (she/her) is a Northern Arapaho and Northern Paiute nonfiction film director, producer, and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She holds a Master of Journalism degree from the University of California, Berkeley, with a documentary film concentration. Tsanavi is a fellow at Firelight Media, Open Society Foundations, and Nia Tero, and was a Woodstock Film Festival resident in 2023.

Anatomy of a Life

SYNOPSIS

When Richard Snyder is diagnosed with dementia, his daughter Emma begins documenting their remaining time together. She finds herself racing against the clock to secure the care he needs — before he loses his memories, his savings, and his home. As Richard’s disease progresses, he is no longer able to speak for himself; the film finds his voice through the words of his alter ego, the protagonist of his unfinished novel. America’s nightmarish elder care system takes over Emma’s life, through both vérité footage and recreations, Anatomy of a Life portrays the reality of the end of life both by those disappearing and the ones they are leaving behind.

Anatomy of a Life is a participant of the 2024 (Egg)celerator Lab.

 

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR & PRODUCER

Emma Francis-Snyder (she/her) is a New York-based activist and award-winning documentary filmmaker. Her directorial debut, Takeover (2021), was nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy® and shortlisted for an Academy® Award. Takeover was part of the New York Times OpDoc series, and shortlisted for the IDA and Cinema Eye Awards. Emma was the Movement Speaker at the 2023 Alzheimer’s Association Imagine Gala. She has been invited to speak at Georgetown University, Princeton, and the NYC Department of Education.